


firekeepers

by satellites (brella)



Category: Morning Glories
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 13:04:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/837198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theirs is not a love story, but rather an arson and destruction story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	firekeepers

Jade, her eyes hot and prickling with messy tears and the terrible pressing of her own rage, scrawls into the first page of her new journal with such force that it tears the paper.

“ _When there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire._ ”

This is what she says to her father, over and over, angrily, in a spitting scream, after she sets matches in the abandoned lumber mill and watches the flames swallow it whole. She had wanted to put her hand inside of it, burn her flesh down to charred bone, just to see if her mother would come home to put a Band-Aid on it. 

* * *

Ike cheerfully asks the flatteringly clad bombshell on his arm to forgive him for ending their evening with arson, but she does him no such favors. He stands, alone, on the sidewalk with his hands in his suit pockets and his sunglasses reflecting the orange blaze with clarity, and as he hears the sirens coming from blocks and blocks away, he starts to laugh in a way that sours his lungs.

The wait in the jail cell isn’t so bad. Hank lets him get up and go to the bathroom about a dozen times, but all he does in the bathroom is use the Sharpie in his pocket to write a little memento of his stay over the urinal. 

“ _When there is nothing left to burn, son, set fire to yourself._ ”

Or, he thinks dryly, your father’s property. In truth, he doesn’t mind the words carved into Abraham’s infuriated shouts, his disdain, his disappointment: at least they’re words to begin with. 

* * *

He dreams of a girl with blood dribbling from her mouth staring down at him and crying and croaking out his name. Her sanguine innards turn to snakes that bury him. 

* * *

Her mother’s hands had smelled of barley and vanilla; her father’s smell like gun metal, fertilizer; her brother’s, like motor oil and the cheap cologne he always wears. 

Jade stares down at her hands now, wondering where the callouses went, her eyes closing when they come upon the long white scar right up the middle of her palm from the windshield glass. 

She brings them up to her nose and reels in her tears.

“What in  _God’s_  name are you doing?” 

She jumps and looks up, sharply, to see the smug, sandy-haired boy from orientation standing casually in the doorway, leaning against the jamb with one raised arm. His blue eyes analyze her with derision.

She slams her hands down into her lap.

“Not much of a talker, are you?” He leers. “I  _do_  like them that way. Are you free to not use words someplace private?” 

“God, fuck  _off_ , you little snake; she’s a freak and a lost cause and she is cuh- _learly_  not interested in your junk,” Zoe snaps from her bed without setting down her magazine.

“Oh, what, darling; you jealous I’m not asking  _you_?” He giggles in a way that should unsettle Jade, but that only makes her lips quirk minutely. “I mean, I could  _arrange_  something; my junk gets awfully lonely—”

“Ike, if you don’t piss off right now, I’m going to use your innards for tooth floss.” Zoe’s voice is saccharine and perky. Ike throws his hands up and backs out. 

“Message received,” he drawls, but not before he flicks his limpid eyes up to Jade just once more and curls one corner of his mouth upwards. “But wait, before I go – tell me. How far down do those freckles go?” 

“You’re a disgusting pig,” Jade snarls in lieu of the first answer that had come into her head:  _Far enough for you to peel them off and get lost in them._

He leaves, and Jade’s father doesn’t remember who she is, and she decides that disgust is a good opinion to have of the boy whose choice in wardrobe she knows better than she knows his name. 

* * *

“Apparently Isaac was the longest-lived patriarch in the Bible,” Jade whispers with a raised eyebrow. The ambient quiet of the library fills the empty air at the study table she’s sharing with Ike. “That’s a good sign, right?”

“Hm.” Something in the backs of Ike’s eyes seems to dim, just enough to make room for the fearsome ignition of something frigid and blinding. “Quite the opposite. Although I have to say, living a hundred and eighty years sounds like an absolute  _drag_.”

“What the hell do you mean, a drag?” Jade hisses, somewhat incensed. “You’d get to have like, tons of grandkids. Make a mark. Get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Grow a beard.” Her voice plunges and so do her eyes. “ _Live_.” 

“Yes, all while my slowly aging body began to fail me until I couldn’t recognize faces or make it to the bathroom, until everyone I’d ever known was pushing daisies, until every day and every year started to feel like a repeat of the other one.” He sneers viciously. “Ah,  _yes_. What a delight. Sign me up.” 

“You’re an asshole,” Jade mutters, and she closes her book, slings her bag over her shoulder, and storms away without direction. 

Ike doesn’t follow her. She winds up in the Greek Thought section, staring down a copy of the  _Oresteia_. She tugs it out with her thumb and index finger and flicks it open to a random page.

_Nothing forces us to know what we do not want to know except pain._

She snaps it closed again.

* * *

“ _Fuuuuuuuuuck_ ,” Ike groans as his eyes peel open. The sight of a sunny sky overhead constricts around his temples with unforgiving force that makes his whole head palpitate with pain. “Christ.” 

“Ike?” He squints and discerns a blurry shape of fiery red, and wonders what he’s ignited this time, wonders if it will sear him from the inside out. “If you don’t have a concussion, I’m going to be really pissed off.” 

“Oh,” he mumbles when the world comes into unflattering focus. “It’s you.” 

Jade’s scowling, bitter expression doesn’t even twitch at his anticlimactic reaction. He moves to stand up, but then realizes that he’s slung between two pairs of arms.

“Ah,” he says woozily. “The palanquins!”

“No,” Jade corrects him. “The Academy’s goons. I’m not even gonna mince it, you piece of shit; I’m pretty sure you’re about to be executed.”

“Oh, wonderful,” he bandies back in an instant. “I do hope it won’t damage this remarkable t-shirt.” 

It starts to slowly crawl back to him: the pit of snakes, the new gods, his father’s shackled form kneeling pathetically at his feet, the way the sweat on Jade’s forehead made the barrel of the pistol slip across her skin. 

He concentrates long enough to shift his eyes further, so that he can properly see her: she’s marching along right beside him, flanked by a security officer with a gun pointed at her, but her chin is jutting out insurgently and her sneakers crunch into the dirt beneath them and there’s a bead of sweat trickling past her jugular. 

“I feel as though walking would be more dignified for me if these are my final moments,” he says absentmindedly, “But at the same time, being carried has its advantages. What do you recommend, Ellsworth?” 

“Stop joking,” she whispers, and he blinks at the severity of her tone, like she actually cares. “We’re not going to let this happen.”

“That’s rich,” he muses. “Wasn’t I just holding a gun to your head?” 

Jade sighs, folding her arms. 

“Yeah,” she admits. “I guess I’m a sucker for giving assholes second chances.” 

Ike hums in thought. “I think I might regret never taking you out someplace.”

Jade snorts. “Yeah, I’ll bet you do.” 

* * *

Once, he thinks about the three freckles scattered across her lower lip and he thinks of the rusty constellations branded into her inner thighs, her navel, her peppered breasts. 

He jerks off alone in the empty suite the Academy had given him. Afterwards he feels warm and embarrassed and gets ahold of three girls without a single freckle on their bodies and soon the undergarments strewn across the chairs and couch make him forget the glimpse he’d gotten of Jade’s gray sports bra entirely. 

* * *

“Okay, so like, if you’re gonna think about Ike while you sexercise,  _please_  do it in a secluded location,” Zoe tells her primly. “Miles and  _miles_  away from me. I mean, it’s  _totally_  your choice, and whatever; I guess I can’t fault your taste, but all I’m saying is, don’t make your high school crush on him  _my_  problem, okay?” 

Jade stares at her, flushed scarlet down to her neck.

“…What?” Zoe tosses her hair over her shoulder, scribbling on her Chemistry homework again. “I’m being a good friend.” 

“Ike’s repulsive,” Jade sputters out after too long. Good enough. 

* * *

“So, this is where it ends, eh?” Ike pants with a crooked grin, brushing his nose subtly against the crook of her neck. “We try to see which of us can sacrifice themselves for the other?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Jade growls back as she stares down Irina’s rifle, bleeding from a split in her swollen, purpling lip. 

“Move aside,” Irina orders, jerking her rifle to the left. Her smile is serene. “Believe me, your life hardly matters to me; you are nothing. I am here to take life away from the son of Abraham. Truth be told, my bullet could penetrate the both of you. But I need to try making Father Abraham proud just once more, for old time’s sake, so here: mercy.” 

“Take your best shot,” Jade dares her, glaring up without faltering. 

Ike grasps her elbow and starts to shove her off. 

“Woman, don’t be absurd,” he hisses. “If it’s me she wants, it’s me she’ll get, but it would be a shame to spoil those breasts.” 

“Naked you came from the womb and naked shall you return,” Irina recites as the sun reflects off the metal of her rifle. “For the Lord hath given life, and the Lord shall take it away.” 

“I’m trying to save your ass and the only thing on your mind is my breasts?” Jade scoffs. “You make me want to puke.” 

“By all means, do,” Ike drawls. “Maybe it would distract her.”

“I am going to count to three,” Irina says, cocking the gun. “One…” 

Abraham is being held in place by about six of the soldiers, his head forced in Ike’s direction. His eyes are red and damp and Ike forgets what it had felt to cut his guts to shreds until the blood had made the shape of a continent on the office floor. 

“Two.” 

“Last chance, Ginger,” Ike murmurs into Jade’s ear. His lips skirt over her lobe and he swears he feels her shiver. “Tell me, really. Why would you want to save a devil like me?” 

“Three.”

Jade fumbles for his hand and grips his fingers in hers until it causes him pain. 

“Just close your eyes,” she whimpers, stretched out on top of him, a fragile barrier pumping with the hotness of life and anxiousness. “And have faith.” 

Ike’s mouth finds the skin of the nape of her neck. He goes through the notes of the gymnopédies in his head: one by one by one. 

**_BLAM!_ **

* * *

_For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life._

* * *

“Only last month we were bleeding on top of each other,” he says into her ear, “And now we’re dancing. You’re awful at this, I might add; I may have to have my toes re-set.” 

Jade’s fingers wait at his shoulders and she’s keeping her eyes on everything but him. She glances over the top of his suited shoulder: Casey’s watching them both vigilantly, her hair piled on top of her head in a round bun, her shoulders in plain view from the form-fitting navy blue dress. 

“Asshole,” Jade mutters to her partner, but she doesn’t lean away from him, from the smell of his breath: blackberries from the snack table. Her chest brushes barely against his, and her breath gathers at the knot of his tie. She keeps her eyes down, on the purple silk. “You know, just a  _thank you_  would be nice.” 

“This  _is_  my thank you,” Ike tells her, just before dipping her. It’s out of place with the slow music, but Jade is too stunned to voice any complaint. 

Jade stares up at him with her hands braced at his shoulders. He’s smirking complacently down at her, very obviously pleased with himself. The light, though it is dim, enables her to notice the dents of darker blue in his eyes, the flecks of silver around his blown-out pupils. His mouth is pink and just slightly chapped and his hand is warm on her back. His fingers drum languidly against her skin. 

“Uh,” she says after a moment. “You gonna bring me back up?”

“Yes, dear; just let me stop getting lost in your eyes,” he retorts, and then grimaces. “That was appalling. Can I go back to voicing my – still present, by the way – extreme desire to nail you to the wall?” 

“No.” His face draws closer to hers, to the point that she can feel the hot breath from his mouth mingle with hers. The presence of him fills the air. 

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” he asks quietly, his eyes going half-lidded.

She links her arms at the back of his neck and, slowly, he straightens again, pulling her up with him. Her left heel clicks onto the floor again, but she doesn’t disengage, keeping her eyes riveted into his. 

“You tell me, shithead,” she murmurs, and his palm slides up her arm, clasping her bare shoulder. It sends a jolt of something white and scarlet-edged and muffled through her limbs. 

“I’m afraid I don’t have the faintest idea what to say,” he whispers, and Jade, instead of kissing him, instead of coloring his skin with the surface of her own in a dark and quiet room, releases him and shoves him lightly and saunters off to join Casey. She doesn’t look behind her.

* * *

“You’re bleeding,” he tells her, brushing her hair from her face with tenderness and care that doesn’t suit him. “You’re  _dying_.” 

“Nah,” she croaks back, her eyes wandering to the stars overhead. The hunting knife sticking out of her abdomen – Hodge’s – leaves a terrible taste in her veins. “I’ll be back. I always am.” 

“I don’t suppose it would please you to hear me say you’ll be missed, dearly beloved?” 

She gazes up at Ike, at his slim cheekbones and parted hair and thin lips and bone-scratching eyes. She puts her blood-sticky hand on his cheek and leaves her fingerprints there in crimson. 

“It might a little,” she whispers.

He presses his lips to her forehead and then he holds her because there’s no one there to see him do it.

“Then just imagine I’m saying it,” he murmurs, pressing his forehead to hers and rocking slightly. “You know how I can get about these things.” 

Jade dies for the seventeenth time cradled in his skinny arms and, in the future, she is stripping him naked, kissing her way down his ribs and leaving crescent-shaped indentations in his skin and silencing him with her mouth and teeth and tongue. 

Now, however, she is small, and his arms are bringing her home to her own empty grave. 

* * *

Marcus’s name surprises her when she looks at her old journal one night, but what surprises her more is what she’d written on the last page at four in the morning with her heart hammering against her chest plate.

_Ike,_

_i want to set fires with you_

_and watch you suck the smoke in_

_before breathing it back out into me_

_knees and skin, singed_

_underwater with mine._

“Gross,” she whispers. She throws it away. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was a present for Ox and got really experimental and weird and kinda bad. But I don't care. That's basically what the ship is.


End file.
